After Life
by Reetinkerbell
Summary: Post 'Chosen'. Buffy continues to live her life without Spike. Mentions of Character Deaths.


**Title:** After Life  
**Author:** Reetinkerbell  
**Fandom:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
**Characters:** Buffy, Other, Scooby Gang. Spike/Buffy.  
**Rating:** PG-13 - Mentions of character deaths.  
**Summary: **Post "_Chosen_". Buffy continues to live her life without Spike.  
**Written:** February 2006. **Edited:** May 2006.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own.  
**Distribution:** Linking only please.  
**Unbetaed.**

**After Life** (1/1)

One day, barely two months after Spike's death and the destruction of Sunnydale, Buffy woke up from yet another dream involving Spike, her pillow and cheeks still holding traces of tears. In the dream, which hadn't been a dream as much as a memory, Spike had been holding her hands in his. She was back in her mother's living room, fresh back from the grave, and Spike was once more sitting in front of her, the look in his eyes disbelieving and frightened.

Buffy remembered another time, not long after, when he told her of how he'd throught he'd been dreaming, and now, there she was, years later, dreaming of that moment. It haunted her, the look in his eyes, even to this day. She could never decide if she was happy that she remembered the way his hands had felt, wrapped around her own smaller ones and the look of wonder and barely containd joy in his blue eyes as they met hers, or sad, because memories were all she had left of him now, as there was no magical way to bring him back.

She knew, because Willow had tried. The moment they settled down in England, she'd begged Willow to help her find a way. Giles had been busy with reconstructing the Council and gathering the Slayers, and had given them free reign of the vast Council Library, located far enough away from the original Council Headquarters, and thus had gone unaffected by the First's antics. Together Buffy and Willow had searched and searched, but found nothing.

That day, when she woke up with the memory of Spike's eyes fresh on her mind – like many other morning and nights she'd woken up from dreams about him – she could almost feel the wounds on her hands once more, it had felt so real. She thought it odd, yet strangely approriate that the night after she'd given up hope on ever getting him back, and calling off the search, was the night she dreamed about their first meeting after her own resurrection.

It wasn't until later that same day, as she sat down for lunch together with Dawn, half listening to what her sister was saying about her progress with whatever demon language she was currently learning, that it hit her.

_'Clawed her way out of a coffin, that's how. Done it myself.'_

Spike had crawled his way out of his own coffin, just like she had. Which meant that, somewhere out there, Spike had a grave. He'd been William at the time of his death, but it was still his. For him.

She'd excused herself from the table, leaving a huffy Dawn in her wake, and gone looking for Giles. She'd found him in his office, and after a quick chat, she took possession of all the Watcher's Diaries she could find that had anything to do with Spike. She hoped to find something – anything – that might point her in the right direction of who Spike had been before he became a vampire and started calling himself Spike. Otherwise, all she had to go on was his first name and the year he'd died. As well organised as the English cemeteries were, she doubted they were _that_ organised. Especially when it came to people long dead.

After finding nothing in the Diaries, she turned to Willow once more. They tried to perform various locater spells, calling for Spike, William, his blood, anything. But the crystal didn't move, stubbornly hovering above their own location. At Buffy's crestfallen expression, Willow explained that, if they had something of Spike's, something to ground them to and connect with the century old blood that had surely stuck to the wood as he fought his way out of his coffin, to make sure that they got the right William, it might've worked.

But as everything had been destroyed in Sunnydale, they had to go about it in the old fashion way – late night research parties, and legwork.

Many of the new Slayers – those who'd never met Spike and never stayed long in the Slayer Central – thought Buffy was crazy when word got out as to what she was up to. Spending time and energy – not to mention the time and energy of other people who should be training them instead – on searching for a vampire's human grave. To them, it was a waste and Buffy didn't care enough about any of them to bother trying to make them understand what he'd meant to her, to them all.

They'd all heard of him, mostly from the Sunnydale Slayer's who'd met him, and they admired his courage and knew that they owed him their lives, but none of them really cared. He was still just a vampire to them, and he was just one of many that they owed their lives too, who'd sacrificed themselves in order to save the world at one point or another. They couldn't accept the fact that he'd been a bad, evil vampire one day, in love with a Slayer the next, only to save the world on a third. Not so soon after having found out about vampires in the first place, and told countless of times how evil they all were.

The older Slayers helped her in between their training and patrol, by doing most of the legwork. Spike had never told her – or anyone else – of where exactly he was from, which meant that they had all of England to search. If Angel knew, Buffy didn't know, as she hadn't spoken to him since the night he'd dropped off the amulet that killed Spike.

A month passed with Buffy and whomever had a moment to spare searched through England's graveyards. It was during that month that Buffy realised something was off. A home pregnancy test later, taken so early in the morning that even the sun had yet to rise, she confirmed her suspicions; she was pregnant.

The first person she told was Dawn, bargning into her baby sisters room and waking her up, not being able to contain her joy at the realisation that she hadn't lost Spike completely after all. Dawn had been ecstatic, forgetting all about her grumpiness at being woken so early the moment her half asleep brain absorbed the news. Buffy waited until Willow had actually risen out of bed on her own before springing the news on her, and the redhead had been just as happy for her as Dawn.

The news of her pregnancy only made her want to find Spike's grave even more. She wanted to be able to give their child Spike's last name, even if he himself hadn't used it in over a century. She wasn't sure why she'd been blessed with such a gift, but she left the questioning to Giles and Andrew.

Every day, Buffy spent less and less time searching for Spike's grave, and more and more time on the arrival of their child. She read every baby book she could find, shopped until she dropped and decorated the bedroom turned nursery that was located wall to wall with her own bedroom in the Mansion she and the Scooby Gang, et al, had called home since moving across the globe.

Once day, she didn't look for Spike's grave at all, and while her friends all knew that she still wanted to find it, they thought it good that she was moving on, learning to live again.

By the time William – the Second, as Dawn was fond of calling him – Summers was born, Buffy had given up on finding the grave completely. It had been a hopeless search, as chances were the graveyard in which William the First had been buried in over a century before wasn't even there any longer. It made her sad, to know that not only was he not coming back to her and their child, but now she wouldn't even be able to say a proper goodbye to him.

The time and energy she'd spend on looking for Spike's grave she now focused on her baby and on training the Slayers, making sure that they were ready to go out and fight the demons located all around the world in her steed. She was glad that she wasn't the only Slayer any more, which had been the case up until Faith returned from jail. Longer even, as Faith had spent much of her time using her Slayer powers for bad, rather than good as she should've.

It wasn't just about not being alone, of facing the world's demons on her own, but now she had her son to think about. But as much as she loved him, and never wanted to leave him, part of her missed the fight, the danger. It was what she was built for, no matter how much she hid away in the Mansion and pretended she was just a normal mom, with an unusual job.

When William was three years old, she started to patrol again. At that point, training other Slayer's an hour or two every day asn't enough for her. She took it easy, only went out a few inghts a week and never alone. Most of the time she had Willow and Xander with her, and the trio reminisced about their early slaying days, even though they were in another country that didn't look the same as their old home. She'd missed it, spending time with her two best friends on patrol, more than she'd first realised, and part of her never wanted to stop the fighting.

As William turned five, she watched him as he blew out his birthday candles on the cake aunt Dawn and Rona had made for him, and thought of Spike. She pretended that the tears running down her cheeks at the thought of her baby missing out on having a father, and Spike missing out on his son's life were happy tears over her son's joy. In that moment, she decided to never ever patrol again, no matter how much she might miss it, as she didn't want to risk leaving her baby to grow up with her as well.

She met a man when William was nine and a half. He came into the gallery Giles had helped her open in her mother's honour, looking for his niece. Blue eyes that reminded her of Spike's – though, not as blue nor as breathtaking as Spike's had always been – they hit it off right away. And when he asked her out, she'd said yes, much thanks to the animated urgings of Willow and Dawn, who'd been hiding in the shadows of the gallery.

She spent the entire evening with him thinking about Spike and comparing the man in front of her to him. She came up lacking and Buffy wondered if Spike had had any idea that he'd ruined her for every other men, and if he'd done it on purpose. When she finally returned home, she found her baby awake and waiting for her in his bed. He begged her to never see the man again, as, though they'd never met, William didn't like him at all. He'd been pouting and his blue eyes were glassy with unshed tears, obviously distressed at the thought of his mother falling in love and having other children with a man who'd be their father and not his, just like his best friend's mother had done.

Later, when Willow cornered her and asked her why she had never gone out with th eman again, despite his many attempts at asking her out, Buffy blamed William, even though she'd made her mind up about not dating again long before she came home.

William had turned ten when he first asked her outright about his father and what'd happened to him. Buffy told him as much as she dared, not wanting him to know all about his father's past nor her own, as such a young age. Her answers seemed to satisfy him, especially after she made it clear that they'd been very much in love with each other, and that if his father had still been alive, they would've been together, all three of them.

When William was sixteen, Buffy caught him smoking. She cried so much that William never touched a cigarette again. He thought she really didn't want him to smoke, when in truth it had been because of Spike. As much as William looked like Spike, and as often as she thought about him, she'd forgotten that he used to smoke. That'd brought back many memories, such as the way his coat smelled, and how his hair felt as she ran her fingers through it, things she'd all but forgotten.

That same year, Buffy and William moved from their town house into a larger house in the outskirts of London. Buffy was happier there, away from the big city. And even though he would never admit it, and he gave his mother grief about the move, so was William. It was in that house, on their first night there, that Buffy told William the truth about what happened to his father. William had always known about vampires. Growing up in the Slayer Central, with _The_ Slayer as his mother, it was unavoidable. Buffy had always thought it best to teach him from early childhood how to protect himself, as she knew the risks and hadn't wanted her baby to be killed because of her. She never told him about his father having been a vampire, and on her request, neither had the rest of his extended family. When she had told him years before that Spike had died in battle, saving the world in the process, William had thought that a vampire had killed him. Buffy hadn't corrected him, not until now.

She told him about about her early Slayer days. Of her first meeting with his father, and the many times they fought. She told him about her two deaths and the resurrection. She skipped over the part where she'd used his father, who'd loved her more than anything, as well as the true reason Spike had sought out his soul. Some things were private, and if William noticed a gap in her story, he didn't comment on it. They spent the night seated across from each other in their barely furnished living room, a roasting fire cracking merrily in the fireplace, talking about Spike.

When William turned thirty, he found out about his mother's unsuccessful attempts at finding his father's human grave. He told his aunt Willow that he wanted to find it, for his mother. He'd been heartbroken to find that without anything of Spike's, there was little to no chance of them finding it, if it still existed. It had been his uncle Xander, on one of his last visitst to the Mother Country before his, luckily, peaceful death, who recalled what his father had said about blood, so many years ago when they were trying to find a way to save his aunt Dawn from a Hell God. He'd heard the story from all angles, and it still broke his heart to be reminded about his mothers death, even though she was still alive and kicking, because he knew that one day, she'd die and never return again.

William had pushed the thought out of his mind, and after he'd pricked his own thumb, letting a small drop of blood fall onto the crystal, the spell worked. He swore Willow and Xander to secrecy, wanting to be the one to tell his mother.

Two days later, he took leave from his job at the Watchers Council, and after kissing his wife goodbye and telling his children that he'd be back later that evening, he went to pick his mother up. He took her to his father's grave and watched over her as she cried, tracing the lines of his father's name, over and over, a beautiful smile playing on her lips.

William hadn't even turned sixty when his mother passed. After a small private ceremony, William drove up to the location of his father's old grave. His mother's small but sturdy headstone had been placed just to the side of his fathers the day before, and as William spread his mothers ashes over the grave, despite the tears running down his cheeks, he couldn't help but smile.

**The End. **


End file.
